A Place Left for You
by RiverCookie
Summary: During Newton's latest visit to him in prison, Zero reflects on his life and his relationship with his former teacher. Antipodeanshipping.


**I started off just sort of looking at Pokemon movies for no reason, when I came across that little scene in the credits of the 12th movie. That led to me searching up fanfiction about Zero, which led me to writing this...I don't know what.**

**Apparently I ship Newton and Zero. Go figure. Enjoy if you enjoy it.**

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You stare down at the table, examining the grain of its wood and trying your best to ignore the person sitting across it.

He greets you cheerfully, as usual. Casually, he asks whether life has been all right for you, and you, as usual, reply with a quiet "yes".

Of course, that's not true. How well could life be behind bars?

The others in the prison never developed a very high opinion of you. Seeing as you spent most of your time scribbling calculations and generally being a complete outcast, that would be expected. You're fine with it, though; you've grown accustomed to being a pariah.

You were tormented even as a child. Your parents weren't the kindest, to say the least. They were wealthy people, and in all truth, cared much more about their money and their appearance than they'd ever care about you. They had given you a name that literally labeled you as nothing. Zero. Your peers, of course, jumped at the opportunity to make your life a living hell. Every day, you'd be bombarded with taunting from the other kids, with such singsong gems as "Zero, Zero, you're no hero" and "Who's the boy with stupid hair? That loser, Zero, over there" lodging themselves into your head for days. Even as you grew older, the torment followed you, and you drew farther away from the world as a result.

To fill the void your isolation had created, you had immersed yourself in studies, and that was how you ended up in the most prestigious university in the region. While you had become quite a handsome man by then, the misanthropic demeanor you had developed over the years warded off any potential friends you may have made. You might have just trudged through your education like you had the rest of your life, had you not met him.

When you first walked into your class with Professor Newton Graceland, he gave you the most charming smile you'd ever seen, and asked for your name. You muttered it and quickly followed it with the snarky remark about it you'd crafted to keep away the incessant teasing. He threw his head back and laughed, and at first you thought he was mocking you. To your surprise, though, the laughter led into a hearty exclamation that it was a terrific name, and he rattled off a few remarks about the greatness of the number afterwards. He gave you a hearty pat on the back and a smile, and you could only stare in wonder and nod.

You wandered off to your seat, unsure about how to respond to the first completely positive response you'd ever gotten to your name. You had once planned to change it as soon as you were free from the cold surveillance of your parents' eyes, but his words prompted you to hold on to it a little longer.

From that day on, you always looked forward to classes with him, and always visited him in your free time. For the first time in your life, you had someone who truly cared about you, and someone you truly cared about in return. Finally, you had someone to fill the void in your heart. And as the days and months passed, the two of you grew closer, and your relationship with him became much deeper than just a student and teacher.

Every time you saw him, you were filled with an indescribable feeling of joy, and starting from some point, you often found yourself just sort of staring at him, observing the way he moved and the curves and lines of his face and the way he laughed when he would notice that those weren't diagrams you were sketching. In turn, he smiled more warmly around you than he did around anyone else, and there was a quality present in his voice when he spoke to you that told you everything you needed to know. You felt that he knew what you wanted to say, but you could never gather the nerve to say it out loud. Still, you hoped that one day you would.

Seeing your eagerness to learn and your potential for greatness, he shared his research of other worlds with you, which you took in almost greedily. You had always dreamed of other worlds, hoping that there would be some place in the universe for someone like you to run away to, some quiet paradise far away from this bitter world. And now here was a chance to see one…as well as someone to come with you.

Your first step into the Reverse World was almost magical, and for a moment, every weight on your heart lifted away. The magnificent pillars of ice stretching as far as you could see, the surreal structures twisting around pathways floating above an endless abyss, and that beautiful sky that shifted endlessly, like an ocean that extended into infinity…it was almost too much for you in that moment. No angry faces, no imposing barriers in your path, no screams that you would be just Zero forever…just you and him, in a beautiful world of endless possibilities.

The two of you soon got to work on studying the other thing that was with you two – Giratina, the master of the Reverse World. Its power to travel between the Reverse World and your old world was something the two of you coveted more than almost anything. With it, you two could be the new masters of this realm. With it, this could be your new home forever…just you and him in this beautiful world.

It was around here that everything started to go wrong.

He was as enthusiastic about the project as you at first, but the more he reviewed the blueprints of the device the two of you had constructed, the more uneasy he grew about it. While the device would definitely give you two the power you had been working so hard to achieve, it would also sacrifice Giratina in the process. At this point, your head was so filled with plans and dreams that when the day came that he deleted every one of the blueprints, you couldn't even begin to accept his decision.

You stopped being his student that day, and went to work on this beautiful plan by yourself. You were determined to succeed, even after the original reason why you wanted to do so was buried beneath your newfound hatred of him and everything else. Every day, you would see filth and despair all around you, and every day, your disgust at everything in your world grew a little more. You reconstructed everything from memory, having been obsessed enough with this grand scheme to have memorized every detail of the original blueprints. After your parents suffered an unfortunate accident (which, despite how much you'd like it to, wasn't your doing), you took their wealth and poured it into bringing the contraption on your blueprints into reality.

You created an AI who you named Infi, who would operate the contraption and take the place of dear Newton Graceland on your journey. You tried to pretend sometimes that she was enough, that she really could take his place, and she reassured you often that she would keep you company in the solitude of your titanic airborne construction. Deep down, though, past the madness you'd descended into, you knew that you were still so, so alone.

You were so close to your goal. Of course, the world wouldn't let you claim your prize so easily. Along with others, your old mentor came and tore everything down. You hated him more than anything then, hated him for killing your dreams, hated him for sending you crashing down right when you were almost at the top. You almost killed him there in that distant world, and at that moment, you really didn't care anymore. You hated him so much, hated him, hated him, hate hate hate…

Then, in a surprisingly literal flash, everything was gone. You remember clearly sitting in your now-icebound aircraft, watching everything you had worked for fizzling into oblivion and listening to Infi's glitched echoes of "All systems down" fade into silence. In the stillness, you had the chance to ask yourself some questions about your grand plan. What had you been working for all this time? Why? What would have happened if you had succeeded? What then? Those questions, the guilt, the rage, all of it echoed in your head over and over, until your consciousness faded into the darkness.

And even after all you had done, after all you could have done, when they came to retrieve you, he was there to help you out. When you saw him peer through the hatch, you vaguely thought that maybe you should be angry at him or something of the sort, but instead, you just gave him a blank stare. Too much had happened for you to feel anything now. He offered you a hand to help you to your feet, which you took, gave you a smile, which you returned vaguely, and accompanied you to your new residence for the years to come. In an earlier time, you would have cried as they led you away from him, but by now you were too empty to even look back.

It hasn't been very long since you were put here, but it feels so much longer. Now that everything is gone, the enormity of what you could have done has descended upon you. You weren't justified at all; you were just a madman murderer who forgot what he was even fighting for, just a madman in a cold steel cage, babbling nonsense to himself and to everyone else. You could have destroyed everything. …You could have destroyed him.

He's made many visits to you before, and every time, he reassures you with that wonderful voice that everything will be all right in the end. But you know that nothing is all right, nothing will be all right ever again.

And that brings you back to this wooden table, which you've been staring at for quite a while now. He's been rambling for a while about how the paperwork's been terrible to chew through, and how you still have a chance to leave this place, but you don't care about anything anymore. There's nothing left for you anywhere in this universe.

He taps your hand, and you finally muster the will to look up. You meet his warm, constantly-smiling eyes with reluctance, those eyes filled with kindness you don't deserve. He holds out a small device and turns it on. Flickering before you is the form of Infi, courteous and devoted as ever. He lets out a hearty laugh upon seeing your amazed expression, and you flinch a little at the longing it draws out from you. As he launches into a speech about how he managed to recover her, and how much trouble he had convincing the police that it was safe to give to him, you can only stare.

As the police inform the two of you that time's up and you're led away, you stare down at the little device in your hands. Once you're in your cell again, you flick it on. Infi informs you that Newton left a message for you. You sit there for a moment before requesting her to play it.

It's only a few minutes long, but a lot can be said in a few minutes. Your cheeks are wet by the end of it, and you're only brought back down to earth by Infi asking you if you were all right. You nod, put her back on standby, and curl up on your bed.

He really does still care. After all you've done, after all the terrible ways you treated him, he still cares. You couldn't repay his kindness in ten lifetimes…but his last words in the message tell you that he'll still give you another chance. You shut your eyes and smile, knowing there's still a place left for you in this world, and that one day, you'll return to it.

"Love you too," you whisper, before drifting off to sleep.


End file.
